NEA hid votes on 'white fragility,' Black Lives Matter, reparations amid new scrutiny

Last summer, the nation's largest teachers union scrubbed its website of newly approved resolutions approving funding for "critical race theory" promotion, "fight[ing] back against anti-CRT rhetoric," and anti-racism training.

The scrubbing went further than previously known. 

The National Education Association also memory-holed some recorded votes from its 2019 "representative assembly" (RA) two years later, shortly after its 2021 resolutions were drawing scrutiny.

Among them: the RA's defeat of New Business Item 2, which would dedicate the NEA to "putting a renewed emphasis on quality education."

The Southeastern Legal Foundation publicized the archived pages, which now redirect to NEA's RA portal, on Monday night. The pages' Internet Archive indexes also show some were first taken down — returning "404 Not Found" empty pages — without redirecting.

The conservative Georgia nonprofit told Just the News it came across the cache of deleted pages while doing research for an upcoming "continuing legal education" event. "There is a lot more that we will be putting out," they promised.

The defeated 2019 resolution on quality education was still live July 6, 2021, but redirected three months later. An approved resolution (NBI 11) to incorporate the concept of "white fragility" into existing NEA training was live July 3 but redirected two months later.

The NEA approved partnering with organizations seeking reparations for "descendants of enslaved Africans" (NBI 25), which was still live July 3 but had disappeared without redirecting five weeks later.

At least three 2019 resolutions may have been scrubbed before the July 2021 resolutions drew scrutiny, with their last live archives in May or June 2021.

NEA approved promoting the "Black Lives Matter Week of Action" in schools (NBI 19). Its agenda includes mandatory teaching of ethnic studies starting in pre-kindergarten, replacing "zero-tolerance policies ... with restorative justice practices," and hiring "more counselors not cops."

NBI 118, which demands the U.S. government "accept responsibility for the destabilization of Central American countries" that led to a flood of asylum seekers, was "404 not found" Dec. 14, the next time it was archived.

An approved resolution opposing "all attacks on the right to choose" abortion (NBI 56) was "404 not found" by July 10.

The NEA didn't answer queries Tuesday seeking an explanation for the removal of its resolutions and subsequent redirections of their URLs to its RA portal. Just the News asked whether they were migrated to new URLs or if old resolutions are customarily removed after a certain time period.